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Village music of Bulgaria

 Bulgarian folk music, with its rich harmonies ~ a decent antidote to a desk-ridden day. Listen here.

Nostalgia for paradise

I was not made to live anywhere except in Paradise.

Such, simply, was my genetic inadaptation.

Here on earth every prick of a rose-thorn changed into a wound.

whenever the sun hid behind a cloud, I grieved.

I pretended to work like others from morning to evening,

but I was absent, dedicated to invisible countries.

For solace I escaped to city parks, there to observe

and faithfully describe flowers and trees, but they changed,

under my hand, into the gardens of Paradise.

I have not loved a woman with my five senses.

I only wanted from her my sister, from before the banishment.

And I respected religion, for on this earth of pain

it was a funereal and a propitiatory song.

-Czeslaw Milosz, Nonadaptation

Closer

Awash in the dark of night, Ioniana leaves the warm bed, garmentless, gentle tips of pale toes glide out from the safe cottage, shoreward. The cold of night, the cold of sea, erect goosebumps, impart a smile, deliver a craved aliveness. She carries questions in her chest, questions that beat against the back of the forehead when in line at the market, that drip blood as she walks a woodland trail in the late afternoon, questions that gnaw as she nods and smiles all the low-lit day through wearisome dialogues, listening to the profane but cocksure assert their truths. 

Tonight, in humility and surrender, she ambles into the black and thundering sea, this murmuration of questions having woken her: Is there anyone I can recognize myself in?! Anyone who doesn't know, yet, opposite of growing apathetic, desperately desires the knowing?! Has anyone spent years studying, listening, reading, praying to God... yet the questions go on unanswered, and they allow this without needing to fill that void with Answers That Will Do?! 

What is Ioniana to do, what are any of us to do, when we long for that highest of wisdom, access to the most crucial of truths, but remain unconvinced? We move closer to God- in prayer, in guided sleep, in devotion, in transformation of forces, in goodness and love, at least as much as we know of it. And yet... 

Meekness and Quietness of Spirit

"The work and office of meekness is to enable us to govern our own anger when at anytime we are provoked, and patiently bear out the anger of others that it may not be a provocation to us." (Matthew Henry)

Meekness is often misrepresented as weakness, as being a quiet doormat. But meekness is strength, meekness holds a center; it is calm and not provoked or provoking. Its sereneness comes from connection to something Higher than the fleeting tempers of man. Meekness means being master over the passions.

"Meekness demonstrates gracious restraint. It responds to accusations or criticism with restraint rooted in humility..." (1 Peter 3:8–9)

From a Hermetic standpoint, anger is a detriment to the spirit, and a power that we should work to transmute. 

To help practice embodying meekness and quietness of spirit: we could remind ourselves often that the great symphony of life is happening as it should, that each individual, including us, has their own journey to undergo, their own lessons to pluck from the ripe soil of hardship, most of which we cannot control, though what we can and ought to master is our own inner nature, to connect with that Higher thing that dwells in each of us and yearns to be remembered amidst the drama of life here on a physical plane.

"Any person capable of angering you becomes your master." (Epictetus)

To practice embodying meekness and quietness of spirit, it's also helpful to be aware of the ego in us that needs to be right, needs to be seen or heard, needs to be acknowledged for deeds, needs others to hold it in high regard... we have to instead surrender and settle into the still calm place of transcendent response to slights and offenses encountered throughout the day. One tool we can use to forge this new habit is making the distinction between the infinite and finite in us. The finite wants to react, to defend itself, to be right, to make its point heard, but the infinite focuses on the state of the eternal part of itself, the part that knows purification, devotion, and transmutation are the raison d'être, and the rest a distraction. In this realization, there's no longer anything to prove or defend, only an ease where meekness and quietness of spirit can prosper.

The Alchemist by David Ryckaert the Younger, 1649

Optimizing the vessel

"The relation of energy to structure is, I think, the central question of biology." - Ray Peat, Generative Energy - Restoring the Wholeness of Life

Some ascetics might make the claim that concern for the physical body is a distraction, and go on eating only rice and getting little movement or sunlight. But having been both well and unwell in my life, I know that it's much more difficult to attune myself to The Divine and to live through my higher nature when I'm feeling unwell. Certainly there is a certain kind of spiritual height that can be reached in illness, or in any dark night of the soul, but when the experience of daily life is getting filtered through pain, brain fog, fatigue... I find this to be distracting and will go on to posit that the health of our vessel, the health of any conduit, is paramount to the reception and signal that vessel can both transmit and receive.

For this reason, I recommend to any seeker or person walking a spiritual path in earnest the works of Ray Peat, Morley Robbins, Jack Kruse, and the like. While nutrition is important, I do believe there are other factors that come into play which impact the nutrition actually assimilated from food consumed such as sunlight, movement, thinking patterns, water, and more. 

If this is interesting to you, I can recommend beginning with Ray Peat's incredible book "Generative Energy - Restoring the Wholeness of Life" which can be read here, free of charge. If, like me, you don't like to read books online, unfortunately finding a hard copy of this book is almost impossible, so my solution was to install the Iris blue light filter on my laptop and set it to the "Health" setting which adds a more comfortable yellowish tinge to my screen. You could also print the .pdf if you have access to a printer.

In a nutshell:

• try to phase out supplements then begin adding certain ones according to this protocol
• favor nutrient-dense foods such as organ meats
• eat seasonally and locally (not because it's trendy but because the food will carry more local sunlight and water)
• shrimp and oysters for copper (if you think you're low in iron, like I did, learn from Morley Robbins and Ray Peat about copper deficiency and iron overload being the actual issues)
• don't be afraid of certain sugars like oranges
• wild-sourced seafood (the importance of DHA can't be emphasized enough)
• local springwater if possible, with the next best thing being reverse osmosis water with trace minerals added, consider sitting in the sun to restructure before ingesting
• morning and midday sun, without contacts, glasses, or windows impeding (no need to wear sunglasses ever again)
• varied movement - try not to just rely on visiting a gym once a day, consider little ways to get varied movement all throughout the day - a set of jumping jacks, a set of push ups, dance for one full song, skip across the yard, do cartwheels, sprint uphill, take a walk, go for a swim, hula hoop, jump on a trampoline... be creative, consistent, and wide-ranging with your movements
• eat more raw animal meats as much as possible (wild/grass-fed/fresh/quality only) - if you aren't comfortable doing this yet, start at a Japanese restaurant by ordering tuna tartare, sashimi or nigiri, salmon roe, and raw quail eggs
• minimize the fruits and vegetables you get from the grocery as most are imported from far away and/or grown using artificial light; instead, grow your produce or visit a local farmers market (one pumpkin can be cooked and stored to last as a side dish for the whole week, for example); always think about the sunlight (or lack thereof) present in your food 
• be aware of the EMF pollution in your home/work/areas you frequent - set your phone and laptop to airplane mode as much as possible, turn off routers at night, etc.
• limit blue light and LED light exposure always, dim your home as much as possible, and avoid screens after sundown, favoring natural light such as candles and oil lamps for optimal sleep (sleep is when our bodies repair so optimizing it is important for long-term health)
• cold exposure (swimming in wild cold water is ideal, but cold showers are a fine alternative)

local grass-fed beef heart, beets, raw goat cheese with pomegranate seeds and bee pollen, 100% cacao

organic grapes, wild sardines, local pumpkin, raw goat cheese with raw honey and bee pollen

Some resources:

Luke Storey and Jack Kruse conversation
Luke Storey and Morley Robbins conversation
Ray Peat clips

Autumn's silver and gold

Two nights ago, I wended my way through the just-dark countryside, having completed the mission of gathering over 20 gallons of springwater (local, straight from underneath a tree root) for the week ahead. As I drove slowly back through an area heavily populated with Amish families, I took my time, slowing down and dimming my lights for horse-drawn buggies full of waving hands and bearded smiles, enjoying the woodsmoke wafting through my cracked windows, woodsmoke from homes where only the warm light from oil lanterns poked orange holes in the deep blue fabric of night, a woodsmoke from hardwoods- one I hadn't smelled in a long time, one steeped in nostalgia from earlier eras of this same life. Nowadays, in my mountain home far off in the Inland Northwest, the woodsmoke smell is of conifers- Ponderosa Pine, Larch, Douglas Fir. 

But for this season, I'm not there, I'm in my hometown instead, devoting time to family and to friendships measured in decades. 

Here, things are much much faster and louder than back home. There's less space- a clutter of homes and roads and tin warehouses and shopping centers. And, as becomes so apparently obvious the more you go away and come back, a marked and obvious degeneration of humans that agitates me at times, frightens me at others, and then breaks my heart. But it isn't just here, it seems to be anywhere with a sizeable population, and such a stark contrast when you spend most of your year in a faraway place with an average of 3 people per square mile. 

Alas! Here we are, and complaining is hardly ever helpful or good for the spirit, so!

How about we wind back the clock to earlier this season, before we left home, as Autumn's silver and gold began to settle over the Okanogan Highlands...

Sometime around the end of October, the trees began to grow sleepy. Some, like the western Larch and Aspen, turned to gold and as the golden forest crept up the mountain, the first silvery dustings of snow gently made their way down, until gold was united with silver, and we found ourselves part of a bejeweled and glistening wonderscape.

And the language of light whispered its poetry over the land and into our grins all those Autumn days ablaze.

While leaves fell and that rarity, the Western Larch, blurring the line between conifer and deciduous, brushed golden strokes through the otherwise evergreen forests...

we were busying away... repairing fences trampled over by cattle (the joys of open range territory), burying apples [3 feet deep!] for wintertime experiments, tossing wildflower seed balls around (prayers they take hold and sprout come Spring)...

and as Eric worked clearing brush and dead trees, I decided to build our first raised bed, challenging myself to use no hardware and spend no money while doing so! I did put some chicken wire (that we already had) inside on Eric's advice to help keep burrowing critters out, but the rest was made using a hatchet and a handsaw. I enjoy this kind of thing, and I like the primitive look best anyway. It's a hugelkultur bed, so lots of sticks and logs as the first layer under there, and composted goat manure a gift from a friend whose farm I helped on this year. It's quite medieval looking isn't it? 

Chicken wire covering the bottom and sides

Then filled with sticks and logs, hugelkultur style

Next I added a fluffy carbon layer using dried grass we had cut weeks prior

Finished with goat manure and used coffee grounds

.::*::.

One early November morning I filled a thermos with coffee and took out to delight in this flaxen gold landscape before the snows arrived the following night. My path took me through thick forests, lonely gravel roads and ghost towns, alongside rivers with magpies darting through the woodsmoked air, passing only a handful of vehicles the whole day. It felt as though I lived inside a painting- one done of egg tempera like Andrew Wyeth, Pieter Brueghel, and the medieval masters knew and used. This land is more than a place, it's a feeling, a visual and spiritual feast for the seeker of real nourishment, a medium through which I can more easily sense God- always calling me into a state of reverence, awe, and solace.

The first snowfall meant it was finally safe to burn the big brush pile we'd amassed over the summer of clearing trails, downed trees, and fallen limbs. So with the temperatures plummeting into the teens, we wrapped ourselves snug enough and went to set fire to it all. I loved working on and witnessing the land in her new coat of white, in this oldest of seasons before the cycle resets.

Then later in the evening, our fire turned into a  little community event with friends gathered 'round!

And it was a joy to be out on this wild land, with mountains towering over us, stars aplenty overhead and howls echoing out from the nearby forests, with a roaring fire keeping us warm and the wood-bright light making honeyed lantern-like figures of us all in the moon-blue and bone-white landscape.

Photo by my friend Kerri

Photo also by Kerri

.::*::.

The place we live is protected by mountain passes on all sides. I say protected because a lot of the ways of getting there shut down from November - April, some with official road closures and a couple just become too treacherous to attempt, leaving a feeling of being gated in, or gated off, from the rest of the world, which I quite like and would prefer just to settle into... but, for now winter involves migrations and that means eventually having to go over one of those mountain passes.

So, in mid-November, when we should've been hunkering down and settling into slower days and our own forms of hibernation, instead we were crossing those mountain passes with packed suitcases and making our way east, via the south and the west. 

We waved good-bye to the Okanogan Highlands, in her twinkling new white adornment...

And greeted Idaho, then Montana...

Then down into Utah where the sun could be felt stronger coming through the vehicle windows. We followed the Mormon Trail and stopped to stretch our legs at Butch Cassidy's childhood home...

And then down into Arizona's red rock desert, where we lived for a short time many years ago, and here we spent some extra time just enjoying the solar charge on our skin and each other. Letting the light in.

And here is the secret spot we climbed up to one afternoon, which we aptly named Smith Mound, though I can't tell you why.

.::*::.

Now we find ourselves back east, where we're from, where the not-evergreened forests sing with oaken and hickoried voices, and the Sycamore, not the Birch nor Aspen, writes white lines through the dreary winter woods. Yet it's familiar here too, and sometimes when I'm out walking, the earthen smells roll up from the ground into my nostrils and I'm nearly knocked over by a sudden cyclone of nostalgia, as though I had just walked right through ghosts of a former life. It's strange to revisit one's original home and for it to feel both totally familiar, and at the same time not at all. A disorienting and curious thing indeed.

For now, this wick of words has been burnt to the wax. I leave you with the final draught from my mug: some films I've enjoyed lately, and a wish and a blessing that we manage to view the world through numinous eyes this season and beyond, no matter where or how we find ourselves. 

Films:

The Banshees of Inisherin

Grandfather 

Maudie

Alone in the Wilderness (to watch the whole thing, you have to purchase the DVD) 

A Love Song

Happy People: A Year in the Taiga